EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?
Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.
Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”
Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.
I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.
So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.
Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.
The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”
The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.
The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.
The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
279 Comments so far
Show AllGood that Mr, Jensen points this out. I think that not too far down the line there is going to be an epidemic of disappointed anger on the part of all the good folks who have separated their trash, used fluorescent light bulbs, driven hybrids, shortened the length of their showers, and generally tried to live ecologically correct lives. They will be enraged and disappointed to discover that it hasn't made any difference when they were told it would.
The big corporations, with their "human energy; will you join us?" ads proclaiming themselves "part of the solution" will, in time, contribute to the anger when people begin to grasp that these institutions are trying to use marketing spin to persuade us that they're solving the problems when they aren't.
The only question is: Will the environment deteriorate fast enough so that people will be spending too much time and energy being ecological refugees, just trying to survive, to have time to be mad at how badly they are being scammed?
FDR's New Deal is another example of activism making a difference.
The hordes of unemployed people camped out in DC spurred FDR to action.
Until we see millions of unemployed people camping out in DC, Obama and Company won't act to improve economic conditions for anybody other than Wall Street and the Military Industrial Media Complex.
raydelcamino July 8th, 2009 10:45 am..Excellent idea...send the homeless to DC. Problem is, just like that bridge in NO, they'll be waiting "at the gates" to turn them away.
'They will be enraged and disappointed to discover that it hasn't made any difference when they were told it would.'
To the contrary, it's made a difference to those who have gotten off their asses and taken the time to do what they felt was right. It's what separates us from bitching whiners.
YES!Tony
"It's what separates us from bitching whiners."
- by giving you a false sense of accomplishment and moral superiority.
A false sense of accomplishment? Possibly, but it's better than throwing a pity party and bitching about why nobody showed.
Buy hey, at least my moral superiority isn't false.
I can't, for one minute, accept that watching how I treat this planet and living responsibly has little to zero impact.
If we stop buying what 'they' are selling, which inevitably means 'they' go out of business and stop polluting, doesn't that mean my personal life changes have a huge impact?
What is Jensen proposing anyway? It has been proven that nobody is listening to us. All we can do, unless it's time for revolution, is to stop buying what they're selling, stop voting for assholes, stop supporting half-measures like the Waxman bill, and to start living our own lives responsibly.
Is he saying there's nothing we can do? BULLSHIT!!!
I think he's saying that what we can do is a lot more than what we have been doing. Instead of not buying from corporations that exploit the planet, try to put them out of business, or better yet, make their business sector obsolete. Getting the country to switch to renewable energies would have far more impact on the degradation inflicted by coal mining than using less energy at home. The thing is, that is much, much harder, and much more dangerous to do.
I personally do try to shorten my showers, use less lightbulbs (why the hell does a fan come with 4 light bulb sockets? I only use 1 in there), unplug appliances when I leave home, I don't drive, etc. But I know there is so much more the entire country needs to do.
Jeevee
Very good, zmann. Al Gore has made it clear that each and every individual makes a difference!
Confrontation, revolution....these are the next steps. Oh? And when you confront THEM? Don't take a shower first, don't take a shower for a week. Stink to high heaven!
Re yohocoma July 8th, 2009 10:46 am, who ends a thoughtful post with the following:
"Not procreating is one of the few very effective personal actions we can take."
Amen. It's the ultimate expression of disgust with the culture of consumerism and its attendant violence against all living things.
But your larger point, and the article's author's, seems to be that most other individual acts don't matter, and I respectfully but vehemently disagree.
For example, my voting for Cynthia McKinney had no apparent influence on the outcome. I expected none, although I hoped for her tally to be significant. It was simply a matter of expressing my preferences clearly, in the manner prescribed by my Constitution.
Much the same is true of my decisions to compost, to purchase a hybrid vehicle, to plant trees that I won't live to see reach their full height, and so on. I do these things, without looking over my shoulder to see if anybody's following, because I've judged them to be the right things for me to do.
All that being said, if you have any detailed plans for "taking on the power directly, rather than using all our energy hand-tilling fields and catching rainwater," I'd be very interested to hear them.
"Is he saying there's nothing we can do? BULLSHIT!!!"
My reaction is the same.
I see value in activism. However, if it does not emanate from one's own nose, if it does not stem from the way we live our lives, then we are merely being hypocrites.
This is not, nor is it ever, an "either/or" situation. It is an "all" situation where we must be activists both within our skins and in the streets and even in the halls of power.
Those who sit on one side or the other and point fingers and rage do nothing to move anything one bit closer to a positive outcome.
I believe it was the Quakers who came out with the phrase: "Pray, but move your feet." We must do both - neither one by itself is effective.
Don't listen to the man - take shorter showers! Then, move your feet!!
"Is he saying there's nothing we can do? BULLSHIT!!!"
That's not what he's saying. Read some more Jensen or listen to him talk sometime. He comes as close to publicly advocating forceful / violent / armed destruction of the industrial state as you can come without being dead, in prison or in hiding. In this case, I think he came as close as you can come and still have your article published in Orion.
He wants folks to take some serious risks on behalf of the planet.
I think we should, and many of us will take some serious risks, however, we must change from the inside out. Demanding that the industrial state morph into a green eco-state while being pigs ourselves will not get us what we want.
Agreed. Brother Jensen is doing his level best to make us aware of where our options lie. Direct action against this killing machine of a culture is the only workable option. Anything else tends toward dissipation and a false sense of accomplishment where there isn't any. Besides, what good is it for you to live simply and sustainably when there are literally billions of your compatriots who can not? I cannot be free, until we all are. I cannot be at peace until my brothers can be at peace.
If you really want to understand what he means, check out Endgame Vols. 1 & 2. Seriously folks, if you want to keep indulging in the goodies given to those loyal to this culture, then stop posturing and accept that. If you really want to do something of effect, living simply is merely the smallest start.
The point is that your individual sacrifice will never be joined by sacrifice from people who don't share your social and ideological mores; and that will never be enough. Some idiot always wants to drive his SUV no matter that his neighbors all have Prius.
Historic atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 ppm. We currently have over 380 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere and climbing. CO2 releases prompt methane releases from the Canadian and Siberian permafrost which will exceed all the carbon released by human action. Simply burning LESS fossil fuels is not enough. We have to burn NONE, as in zero.
Then we have to come up with a means, possibly biochar, of sequestering carbon already in the atmosphere without causing more damage than is already done. This would require massive, global, government action and resets of priorities. Until that happens all we are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
If you look very closely, the environmentalists in the US are talking about carbon dioxide as the big problem. Almost no one mentions animal agriculture. The real inconvenient truth is that carbon dioxide is not the main cause of global warming. The main cause of global warming is animal agriculture.
The fact that animal agriculture is the main cause of global warming has been scientifically proven by Dr. James Hansen, who is head of the global warming research for NASA, and is the grandfather of global warming research. According to him, carbon dioxide is 9% of the problem— at best. According to Dr. Hansen, the aerosols that are released with some of the sources of carbon dioxide help to nullify even that 9%. That is an impressive statement.
The truth is you can do all your improvements with electricity, use as many Prius cars as possible and go as green as you want , but you really aren’t going to make much difference in terms of global warming (weather instability), because carbon dioxide isn’t really the big problem. The big problem is methane.
Methane accounts for about 50% of global warming. What’s really important here is that carbon dioxide takes between 100 and 10,000 years to get out of the atmosphere. Methane takes 9 to 15 years to get out of the atmosphere. That means that if everyone went vegan now, we’d have the opportunity to bring global warming to a halt—almost immediately.
Methane comes 85% from cows burping and farting; this is a problem because there’s a lot of cows on the planet. The cows take up 70 percent of the arable land (that means agricultural land) and 30 % of the land mass that is being used on the planet. They use nearly 70 percent of the potable water. That’s huge. The excretion of the cows is 130 times more than the human excretion on the planet.
The cows produce a billion pounds of manure a year in the United States. That manure gives off not only methane, but nitrous oxide, which has about 300 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide. This billion pounds of manure produces 65% of the nitrous oxide in the US.
Methane and nitrous oxide are the major global warming gases. There is one more; it’s called ammonia. Ammonia is given off a lot by the manure and also by the animal sewage lagoons. Ammonia has more to do with what we’ll call acid rain, which causes another set of global problems. They all work together to toxify the planet.
Everybody’s life is at stake on the planet. We’ve got to get to understand what we’re talking about. Are we willing to go out of our comfort zone of our economic and dietary excesses to do this?
We have to look at the fact that since the 1950’s, in the U.S., meat-eating has increased by 54 pounds pounds per person. The average person in the United States eats 230 pounds of meat per year. In Africa it’s 30 pounds per year. The average around the world is 90 pounds per year. China has increased its meat consumption since 1950 by 15 times. And what is the impact of that? The result of this increase is that China has become a grain importer since 1970, rather than an exporter.
If everyone decides to go vegan then the global warming shell game is over. Starvation is over. The destruction of the water supply is over. Since everyone doesn't decide to go vegan, you can start with yourself. Then, if you want to take your activism locally and globally, do whatever you must to get people go vegan.
If everyone decides to go vegan then the global warming game is over.
If everyone decides to go vergin then the global warming game is over.
AND a more humane way of life cannot help but result.
When the sentient source of your food is tortured to death how can that not have an impact on you?
If you can't see something this simple and obvious nobody can explain it to you.
No, the entire earth going vegan, would eliminate about 18 percent of the gases forcing global warming - a big step in the right direction, but we need to eliminate 75 percent of these gases.
Mr. Jensen also should have said something about this "one-answer" fanaticism that is an oh-so USAn phenomenon. Veganism, permaculture, the "atmospheric vortex engine" etc...
And you you aren't going to stop humans from eating all meat, much less eggs and dairy products, which are a needed source of protien for most people if one does eschew meat. The pure "vegan" diet is a phenomenon of US fad-diet culture, and is completely impractical in much of the world. Come to think of it, most devout vegans I meet in look pretty unhealthy to me. The rest occasionally "cheat". Even the most devout Hindus or Jains aren't vegan.
'One answer' solution(s):
The simplest one answer (and why doesn't anybody promote it more?), since it is soooo obvious, is to kill all humans.
The seoond simplest one answer is to kill the corporations.
Frankly, I prefer the second one answer.
nedlud
"Mr. Jensen also should have said something about this "one-answer" fanaticism that is an oh-so USAn phenomenon. Veganism, permaculture, the "atmospheric vortex engine" etc..."
You're right, there is no one answer. There are millions of answers.
Permaculture is comprehensive. Have you looked at it? The point your are trying to make, and perhaps Jensen's point too, is that USans have to embrace permaculture. Maybe you can rewrite your entire comment.
virgin
Good luck getting the entire world population to stop eating meat, which is natural, and a part of probably every culture in every region of the world.
I may be less of a meat eater but as one who used to enjoy visiting the farmlands so much and eventually learned the sad and painful truth about the demise of small farms over the decades, I still respect the meat eaters. In fact, since most vegans food comes from overprocessing while pasture raised meat and diary do not guzzle up that much fossi fuels and water, it's hard to tell who to side with. Cornfed animals are the issue. Before factory farming was pushed into overtaking small farms and smashing them, people would get their local produce from these farms and ranches in addition to a local farmer's market. Today, so much plastic is wasted on wrapping up all these overprocessed junk foods which themselves guzzle more fossil fuel and water compared to locally grown food. There's so much to explain on this matter but to sum it up, it's not the meat vs vegetarian issue alone but the way food is processed that's the major problem.
Jennifer:
I agree with all of your points. The meat I eat and the milk I drink come from a pasture that is less than 25 miles from where I live. I sometimes shop at a co-op that does not sell meat and am amazed to see the vegan junk food -- sugary, obesity-causing foods like cupcakes, and processed vegan foods that have been shipped in from 3,000 miles away that are marketed as "healthy." Some vegan food is healthy, and I don't deny that. But the whole vegan vs. meat-eater argument often seems oversimplified to me. Food issues are pretty complex.
It seems part of the vegan movement is to get as many people as possible to switch away from animal products, by showing anything can be made of all-plant ingredients. Of course, many food 'products' are not healthy in the least, animal-free or no.
Food issues can be complex but not so much if you are eating a reasonable variety of uncooked, organic vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds, and spend a few minutes a day in the sun. In that case you will get all of the protein, all of the calcium and all of the other nutrients you need. On the other hand, if you know the farmer and know that the meat and dairy you are consuming is organic, then you are probably free of most of the pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, hormones, growth stimulants, insecticides, tranquilizers, radioactive isotopes, antibiotics and other assorted drugs and colorants that are in your local market meat and dairy.
However, even if the meat and dairy you consume are organic, what you are getting is too much unusable, coagulated or chemically bonded calcium, and protein imbalance which clogs the basement membrane between your capillaries and your cells. In other words, a protein storage disease. Nutrients and oxygen are not passing properly into your cells and waste products are not properly eliminated. You are also getting lots of lovely amyloid deposits, a bi-product of animal protein metabolism which causes tissue and organ degeneration, a major factor in premature aging among other negatives. You are also getting an exciting phosphorous imbalance which pulls the calcium out of your bones to buffer the acidity, and not vice versa. This doesn't eventually lead to a loss of bone density, it is a loss of bone density. Animal protein intake results in a negative calcium balance. If you are lucky and also eating lots of green leafy vegetables, your depletion may be temporarily offset.
If your milk is pasteurized, that process destroys the lipase, phosphatase and amylase enzymes that your body needs to properly digest it, and assimilate the minerals, including the calcium. It also leads to long term digestive track weakening that you may never feel. Similarly, if you cook your meat, that destroys the lipase enzymes in the meat too, and changes the fatty acids from "cis" to a "trans" configuration which further blocks the respiration function of the cell membranes. The metabolic combustion of animal protein in your body creates an overly acidic system because of the accumulation of toxic protein metabolic wastes such as uric acid, purines and ammonia.
The need for high protein and animal based calcium is an old myth based on fear not fact. Most green leafy vegetables have a far higher concentrations of usable protein with all 8 of the essential amino acids, and calcium, and other vitamins, enzymes minerals and phytonutrients than do meat and dairy, and they come without all of the heart-clogging and toxic sludge baggage. And that is before the meat is cooked and the milk is pasteurized. After that, their nutritional value plummets by more than 50 percent and their enzymes drop to zero.
The diseases caused, triggered and exacerbated by the consumption of meat and dairy are legion and well-known, from heart disease to several forms of cancer, to osteoporosis, to diabetes, etc. Don't let your zeal to defend your consumption pattern miss out on the fact that the casein in dairy( which is the main ingredient of Elmer's glue) is 300 percent higher that mother's milk and contains strong opiods that merely feed your addiction. Kick it for a few weeks then read the tremendous, mounting evidence from several major studies (many cited in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Medical Tribune) that the single most important dietary change a woman can make to prevent osteoporosis is to decrease the amount of protein in the diet. The other factor is to eliminate all animal calcium and eat organic plant-based calcium sources (such as kale, collards, mustard greens, broccoli and cabbage) which are low in oxalates and therfore properly absorbed by your body.
"Everybody’s life is at stake on the planet." I think it would be wise to start to replace "life" with "body" in statements like this. It is the form of life we all reside in that is limited. Life it's self is unlimited and eternal. We perceive we are the body because we have forgotten to perceive the life that animates it. Truly this body is challenged by our beliefs and actions today but our life is what can transcend these challenges and that life is not threatened at all. As we draw up the life force in our body and transcend to a balanced place of living, we become aware of how to live instead of focusing on how we will die.
Wow, Leea, that is profound, insightful and thought-provoking. Very deep thinking. I especially like your last sentence. Reminds me of a line in a Bob Dylan song where he says, "he who is not busy being born is busy dying".
This morning I had a funeral to go to. One of my mom's friends died from Cancer. I should have gone, but then all kinds of "living" needed to be done. So instead of spending 2 hours in the car driving to and from a funeral, I helped feed some hungry folks and worked on a grape arbor.
Life is for living. Live it up!
Gracias Moondoogy, we are one in this and all, ;)
Awesome, JHC. Thanks for sharing those sobering stats! I went vegan in January 1, 2000. Except for the occasional local free-range organically and naturally fad chicken egg. We need to quit eating belching, farting grain-fed bovines and other farm raised animals.
Farmers, take note: Grow hemp and... actually grow a lot of different things. Abandon livestock farming and monoculture. Abandon agrochemicals and disking.
Permaculture and vegetarianism will heal our beleaguered atmosphere and put us on the path to sustainability.
"Burp, fart!" Oh, whoops, pardon me.
Not a meat eater but learned something here.Tony
There are 200 millon Cattle in India. This in addition to 90 million buffalo. This is aboout three times the total in the US and Canada in an area about 1/7th the land mass.
The 100 million or so cattle in North America replaced a herd of North American Bison that roamed the plains for thousands of years that had a population of 70 million at the high end. These bison about 30 percent larger mass then modern cattle.
Now India eats a FRACTION of the meat we do in North America and in fact beef consumption has not increased through measurable history.
Yet they have around 3x the number of cattle.
I am suggesting that the increase in GHG emissions has less to do with the total number of Ruminants then it does with the industrialization of agriculture.
I don't understand targeting the folks who are taking shorter showers and living simple lives as the ones who should be taking more potent political stances. It's a responsibility of us all to get off our asses and do something. And we are all falling short...way short. A more appropriate reprimand would be to get from out of the front of the TV, off our cells and computers and to march to the hell hole of DC and demand the whole damn government resign due to incompetence, greed, criminality, corruption and NON-REPRESENTATION. Now we're talking!
"I don't understand targeting the folks who are taking shorter showers and living simple lives as the ones who should be taking more potent political stances."
Because we're the ones who give a damn.
zmann July 8th, 2009 9:43 am...My point being that "we" will never be enough. The idea is to get folks involved who are in the grip of the lies and deception. Then we will have the numbers we need to make an impact.
Good point. So do we get those folks involved, or is it up to someone else?
zmann July 8th, 2009 9:55 am...........Personally, I am in a difficult position, financially and caretaking wise, but I do my best by handing out pertinent info and DVDs in my area....VERY conservative/Evangelical North Central Florida. Uphill battle all the way.
Sorry to hear buddy. I;'m from South Florida myself, but went to USF in Tampa for 2 years. But yeah, Florida is pretty religiously conservative outside the big cities.
And hey, that's a good way to go. That's what I did while at college, sharing information I came across that pushed progressive messages, or simply countered the wrong actions our country was taking. Netflix is a great source for documentaries...it was tough at school to get a place to show them to other students because of all the red tape involved in using school space, but hell, my dorm room had to work from time to time.
zmann July 8th, 2009 10:22 am... Came from S. Florida myself....Boynton Beach....Netflix keeps you from duplicating. I get most of my DVDs from Tom at the 911dvdproject.com...more than just 9/11 DVDs, although that's the area in which I concentrate.
All you can do is present them with the info. They will listen or not. AND, politics in this area is rarely discussed...like it's a secret or a taboo subject. Maybe it's just resignation...have yet to figure it out...just not here long enough, I guess.
zmann. Thanks for giving a damn, man. You're cool.
And you're the standard for us to live up to on here :-)
Trying to tell us that we are the problem is a necessary diversion if corporations are to be allowed to do as they please.
No magic trick can work unless the audience believes what is not true, and is watching carefully (so as not to be fooled) what they have been told to watch.
Corporations are not only not individuals, they are a mindless, growing, destructive entity that cannot rest until they own everything. Then they will fight each other until only one corporation is left, but by then there won't be a planet left either.
This economic meltdown is an opportunity to break the monster into smaller, manageable pieces.
Sioux Rose
Jensen makes a great case. We are so accustomed to linear equations. As a result, we sometimes fail to realize that there is a place for everyone, and thus a number of solutions and approaches at the proverbial table.
It IS important that some persons act as wayshowers/role models to forms of living that go more gently on this amazing earth. Moondoggy, you are such a one.
It IS important that citizens/consumers recognize that every time they buy a big mac, they contribute to the "meat market." The first poster makes a compelling case for what this dietary predilection means for global ecology. (I happen to think that eating meat also contributes to macho personality traits and the over-all ridiculously inflated US emphasis on Mars, war, aggression, in general.)
Jensen makes an important case, critical really, that the individual can only do so much via lifestyle alterations. A lot of would-be activists dilute their passion by diverting the call to change ONLY to their own neck of the woods. To me this is similar to the New Age movement that co-opted much political activism in general by diverting persons to the task of "self work," the quintessential inside job. I often argue that it must be both! The individual owns an obligation to evolve at his or her own rate, but so, too, must citizens contribute to the overall evolution of the society they share. It is not an either/or proposition.
One hidden factor of the "Mars rules" bankrupt ethos that is so prevalent in our land of the hardly brave is the focus on SELF. We see it in consumerism, that TV commercials market to the "single digit consumer," to increase sales/market shares. It is also seen in the "YOY" economic priorities, in the conservative belief that everyone is responsible for himself; and in its most raw form, as competition, the sporting arena, and its acme, the killing fields a/k/a "theaters" of war.
As scarcity begins persons will by necessity find themselves forced to learn how to work better together. Community will emerge from the ashes. Truly we are coming into a phase where we either learn to care for one another, or may otherwise perish. An armed nation with lots of persons angry, hungry and/or homeless (added to those who cannot get humane treatment for medical needs) can be a land more dangerous than any scene drawn from an apocalyptic film.
When you said linear equations, you reminded me of why most of us find calculus so difficult in high school and college. If the young minds were allowed to actually think dynamically and allowed self-development, even the most complicated equations wouldn't look so difficult.
You nailed it on the next to the last paragraph. I think that this SELF mentality is forced upon children at very young ages. No one is taught Basic Interpersonal Communications Skills and this makes it too easy for one bully kid to step in and corrupt the other kids. If that's not enough, the adults in charge who have grown up with the individualist mentality will do almost anything to try to force children to be selfish and even be proud of it even if it involves physical abuse. I was lucky that my parents weren't that way although they used to nag a lot about me not being like everyone else and being too nice and caring. I was also lucky, come to think of it, that I got rejected for not getting too materialistic about things even though I used to get hooked into junk food and would sometimes eat like mad when depressed but later overcame that madness.
When you become resistant and even immune to greed, materialism, selfishness, warmongering, and the likes, at first it can be difficult to mingle in the crowd and relate to those who are your friends but don't share that view. The tricky part is getting others to accept that. Maybe there's a good book on counter-seduction?
i'd imagine we're headed into a time of aa groups that deal in (borrowing from chellis glendinning) recovery from 'western civilization' or some such thing... truly, having grown up incarcerated, our imaginations lobotomized and attention constantly shifted for us from subject to subject by means of bells (in schools) or media manipulation in asphalted-over places once teeming with life, with homogenous groups of same age/class/ethnicity for the most part, overcoming the accepted paradigm of compliance/conformity/competition and image-consciousness (as opposed to just consciousness) we in the 'developed' world are at the low low end of a big big learning curve toward a realism that is genuinely respectful/aligned with the earth, our home. much has been done to disconnect us from our essential roots and much needs to be done to reconnect as a species so as to have the wherewithal to employ ourselves usefully for the sake of each other and our glorious planet (as opposed to a paycheck's admission into the theatrical, commodified world that money can buy)... actually i've no idea how to talk about this, but suspect we have a great deal to learn from other species and natural phenomena in this respect.... mycelium, bees, penguins, polar bears, cauliflowers, nettles, earthworms, linden trees.... rivers, rocks, weather... whatever's around. and each other, especially those from whom we believe ourselves to be most alienated. just a guess. globalization/privatization has tricked us into thinking that enormous systems can and do determine the trajectory of our lives. hyperindividualism tells us we wield a 'free will' and can be masters of our own fate. neither and both have 'true' arguments. communitarianism is the frontier of our time, i think, given the way things are shaking down to require of us the development of a whole lot more interpersonal skills to reframe our perceptions from the 'ownership society' ethos to an 'our part in the great web of being' ethos. the older i get the less i worry about seducing or counter-seducing & the more i am seduced (and humbled) by this mystery school called life, really.
I would say that physically or mentally, we've all grown up incarcerated one way or another. Now that you mentioned ownership society, my favorite characteristic of the Native Indians is how they viewed land. Instead of all this private ownership poop, people actually got together and took land collectively. I've even studied a few ways they were frugal. I look forward to actually going and meeting the tribes out in the Dakotas and Montana. I might even stumble across one of my favorites on this site, Moondoggy. God, when I look back at history and realize the extent to which old Europe committed this atrocity of wiping out the Natives first with their careless spreading of diseases followed by violence through misunderstanding the natives along with playing divide and conquer, I realize that God punished and laid a curse on this nation for generations to come. Maybe when our country dies for good will the curse be relieved. I just hope I'm not alive to see it by the time it happens. Still, I believe that it's not too late to reframe the definitions of "ownership" and set things right again although we'll have to do this in spite of the cornfed and utterly ignorant masses. Good luck to us all.